The fan on my outdoor heat pump has not made any sounds whatsoever lately. The fan does not go on when the indoor thermostat is set onto heat at a slightly higher temp than the indoor temperature. No tripped circuit breakers on my main power box for my house for either the heat pump or for the backup indoor heat system. The fan will spin freely.

I suspect that there's a simple fix for this problem... maybe I need to cut off all of the power and turn off the thermostat and go out an open up the outdoor unit and push a circuit reset button there or look for a disconnedted wire?

Any chance you could give me some helpful advise? Much appreciated :^)

Update: I turned off the main power at the circuit breaker inside of my house and turned off the thermostat. Outside, next to my heat pump there's a metal electrical box with 2 screws that appear to hold the top cap onto that box, so I removed them. It appears that the front door on the box won't open unless I can lift that cap to give it clearance. Sadly, the cap is not budging and I'm concerned that I could damage things if the cap isn't supposed to lift.

Years ago I vaguely remember it being a simple matter to open that box. What's the trick to getting that box to open?

I hope you can help me out. Thanks :^)

Update: My auxiliary heater in the basement will turn on and the indoor fan blows air indoors, but the outdoor heat pump fan just sits there still and does nothing. There never was a time when my heat pump became more noisy, I just noticed today that the outdoor fan would not come on. I was eventually able to open the electrical box adjacent to the ourdoor pump unit: inside it there is a heavy duty ceramic or plastic thing I can pull out which assures that no electricity will enter the outdoor unit, I believe.

Now that I can shut off the indoor circuit breakers and the indoor thermostat and pull the plug outside in that electrical box adjacent to the outdoor heat pump, I believe that my next job is to open up that outdoor unit and see if anything appears out of place. I'm holding off on doing that until I can get some good advice as to what the circuit breaker there might look like, or where it might be located or other helpful advice specific to my situation.

In the meantime, I'm not running the auxiliary heater because I've heard that it's not good for it in these kinds of situations. I have a couple of small space heaters to keep the pipes from freezing.

Through the years, I've been careful to keep the snow off & away from my outdoor unit. It was during today's snow storm that I became certain that the outdoor heat pump fan has not come on since the last snow storm of 4 days ago - a small amount of powdery snow was still resting on the actual fan blades still. The blades spin freely when I bump them.

I hope I've provided enough clear & useful information here. Will appreciate your help very much. It's snowing pretty heavily here still, but I don't suppose there's any reason for me to continue cleaning off the outdoor pump unit until I have a better idea of what to do when I actually get inside of it, is there?

Thanks for your help! :^)